For the past few years, Apple has been hammering away at building its own mapping platform to shake …
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The companies that make mobile gadgets are fleeing Google Maps—well, except for Google. Microsoft's taking Nokia's excellent mapping software for Windows Phone to replace Bing, Apple booted Google with iOS 6, and now Amazon wants its own contestant: a little firm called UpNext, which provides mobile mapping, navigation, directions, transit routing, and 3D imaging—and from the looks of it, serves it up better than Apple Maps. Pretty much every single thing you'd want if you were going to, oh I don't know, release an awesome new Kindle Fire or some sort of Kindle Phone. Maybe Amazon doesn't have any of this stuff planned yet, but it just dropped $2.8 million just in case, the WSJ reports. That's a hell of a steal if Amazon wants to be the Next Cool Bro at the mobile mapping bar—and there's every reason to believe it does. [WSJ]